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I’ve spoken before about Spirit using my challenges as “raw material” for their messages. Although this one particularly unpleasant challenge happened many years ago, I still vividly remember it.

One Saturday afternoon I locked myself out of my house. So I pried open a window and got in that way. The next-door neighbor saw me and called the police.

Several minutes later two police cars pulled up at my house—I had to prove to them I lived in the house. That’s the sad part of this story.

I don’t blame the neighbor who called the police. If you saw a total stranger climbing in the window of the house next door, what would you do?

The saddest and most disturbing part of this is I’d lived in that house a long time. Yet my neighbor did not recognize me. He’d probably seen me many times. I go out jogging most mornings. And I come and go several times a day most days.

How well do we know our neighbors, the folks who live next door? I’m just as guilty of this sin of omission as the neighbor who called the cops. It was a real wake-up call for me.

Do we care about the communities we live in? Do we care enough to get to know the strangers who live next door? We’re all on this planet together and we live in a global community, especially in this age of the internet. If we don’t care about our neighbors, how much do we really care about ourselves?

Spirit

You have a saying, “Love makes the world go round.”

It’s true—love does make the world go round. But in more profound and powerful ways than many know.

Love must always start within your own hearts. That is where it has its roots and its power. And it must be directed at you. You must love yourselves unconditionally before you can truly love others. Loving others without first loving yourselves is a hollow shell of little value.

That is the first and most basic step in learning to love others. As with charity, love begins at home.

If you find yourselves feeling disconnected or estranged from your fellow humans, it’s because you are not connected to yourselves. You are not aligned with your higher self, with the divine flame within your heart. That flame is now little more than a barely-warm, dying ember of what was once a brightly burning flame.

It’s time to rekindle that dying ember. It’s time to fan it into the bright golden flame it was once. It’s time to see the divinity within your own heart, within your own consciousness.

When you are able to fully recognize and remember the divinity within yourselves, you will never again feel estranged from your fellow beings, human or non-human.

8 thoughts on “There Are No Strangers by John Cali and Spirit”

One thing I have noticed in my life and in the world in general is how a sense of community flourishes in difficult times, such as disasters and tragedies and hardship. For example during the second world war in England, whole communities came together in mutual support and friendships flourished in the face of hardship. During natural disasters whole neighbourhoods come together to aid and support each other.

When I was a child I lived in a neighbourhood where there was a lot of poverty. Noone had much of anything really. But the sense of community was immense. Noone was a stranger, all the children played together, people talked in the street and on the downside there was no such thing as private business LOL. And it was the same years ago in the terraces and poorer neighbourhoods. Families had a great sense of connection and friendship.

I now live in a village and can go days without seeing another soul. It seems that the more affluent our society becomes, the less socially connected it becomes too.

It’s a slightly sad commentary on humans that we come together more during “bad” times than good. But at least we come together then. It’s become obvious to me, in my own life, how important it is to have connection and community with others.

Great post john
I think modern society has evolved in this way
I know a few of my neighbours ,who they are and what they do ,and that’s about it
But it can be awkward sometimes, misunderstandings run riot sometimes
Here in ireland there would have been a good solid community basis for a Long time
Until the modern money mania ,consumerism and matierialism slapped us on the face
And isolated us in the form of whats called the Celtic tiger
Then that bubbl burst with the recession and people are considering alternatives ,differen ways o living and getting by ,back to basics is the term used
I suppose what they call the police state has spread ,partly because of suspicion ,paranoia and insecurity that has been particularly exploited by the media
I think they way things were before when people were more aware of their surroundings,neighbourhoods and who lived there with plenty of familiar faces gave a sense of community and safety which is lacking more so nowadays
It seems its actually easier to meet people online on the other side of the world
Than next door neighbours , funnily enough
I think before localities were more secure ,people knew each other and the routine of the year was regular with communal festivals etc like Halloween etc where you easily could meet everyone easily and naturally
I suppose globalisation has a lot to do with it
A global digital village where relations are more random and tenuous
A world possibly more open but also more vulnerable
It’s all part of he shift or collective evolution we are going through
Transitioning to new ways of our world and societies
So hopefully we come theough the other end in good enough shape
Just on this subject m Scott peck wrote a book a different drum
About the need for and lack of community and how it’s the next step towards world peace
He talks about rugged individualism in society and the importance of community and its lack it the modern world
I think the more we foster unity,oneness and a healthy sense of community
Whether online or in the real world around us, the better we will all be for it
It seems we re going theough a Global rite of passage as kingsley dennis says
Lets hope and work for a better world as we go through it

What a wonderful man, the Dalai Lama is, I saw him when he came here to Australia and I listened to him talk, he just spoke the simple truth and isn’t that what our lives are all about.
Thank you again John, great newsletter.

We tend to draw a line in the sand regarding our relationships. We only regard our friends and family as being in relationship with us. But you have many types of relationship. You have a relationship with people at work, with your neighbours, with the shop-keeper you see most days, with your doctor. You might consider it a different type but it is a relationship all the same. There is an energy exchange between the two of you. You as one half of that relationship can set the tone of the type of interaction you would like to have and you can see it as an opportunity to lift the spirits of both of you for the rest of that day.

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